bit systems

Linux x86_64: Detecting Hardware Errors

by Vivek Gite on June 2, 2009 · 6 comments

The Blue Screen of Death (BSoD) is used for the error screen displayed by Microsoft Windows, after encountering a critical system. Linux / UNIX like operating system may get a kernel panic. It is just like BSoD. The BSoD and a kernel panic generated using a Machine Check Exception (MCE). MCE is nothing but feature of AMD / Intel 64 bit systems which is used to detect an unrecoverable hardware problem.

Program such mcelog decodes machine check events (hardware errors) on x86-64 machines running a 64-bit Linux kernel. It should be run regularly as a cron job on any x86-64 Linux system. This is useful for predicting server hardware failure before actual server crash.

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Download of the day: FreeBSD 7.0 ISO / CD Image

by Vivek Gite on February 28, 2008 · 3 comments

FreeBSD 7.0 stable has been released and available for download. FreeBSD is back to its incredible performance. According to some benchmarks on both Intel and AMD 64 bit systems FreeBSD 7.0 being faster than Linux 2.6 when running PostreSQL or MySQL. It has experimental support for Sun’s ZFS filesystem. gjournal can be used to set [...]

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